Free The Dead Travel Fast by Deanna Raybourn

countess to travel to Paris to visit Andrei, and Andrei refused to come here after his grandfather’s death. It grieved the countess, and she has been so unwell. I had hoped Andrei would remain here for her sake, but it is not to be. He announced almost as soon as he arrived that he meant only to stay for a month or two and then return to Paris. He will take the countess if she wishes to go, but I think she will not leave her mountain. She has lost the habit of city life and would mourn this place.”
    “And you?” I prodded gently.
    She drew in a deep breath, but she shed no fresh tears. The loss was not a painful one. “They spoke of it in the library one day. They did not realise I was in the gallery above, but I heard them. She demanded an answer as to his intentions, and he spoke plainly. He told her he would never marry me, that he thought of me as a sister, and could never think otherwise. She argued with him, but he would not be moved. He made himself perfectly clear, and there is no hope that he will be changed. And when they left the room, I sat down upon the floor and wept.”
    “From relief, you said,” I put in, thinking of her startling revelation on the forest path.
    “I have never wanted to marry, Theodora. I am not romantic, nor do I wish for children. I want only peace and quiet, my books and my music and this place. If I were religious, I should have made a good nun, I think,” she added with a small smile. “I am not like you. You have always thirsted for adventure, for independence and exoticism, but I am cut of less sturdy cloth. I am a wren, and I have made my nest here, and I am content to be alone. Perhaps I might be persuaded otherwise for a different man, but not for Andrei. I can think of no man less suited to securing my happiness.”
    I chose my next words carefully. “Is there some flaw in him that makes him unsuitable?”
    “I loved him once,” she said simply. “I loved him when I came here, as an unwanted child will love anyone who is kindly, for Andrei was kind in those days. I saw him seldom. He was often far from home, but when I did see him, he was all I could admire. He taught me to ride and to shoot an arrow true enough to spear a rabbit and he gave me adventure stories to read. But then he would leave again and I was forgot, cast aside as he would put off his country tweeds or his Roumanian tongue. I was nothing to him but a pretty nuisance,” she added with a rueful smile. “But as I grew older, I realised he was not as I imagined. I had thought him noble and virtuous, in spite of his neglect of me. It was only years later that I began to hear snippets of his life abroad, the seductions and scandals. I saw the countess break her heart over him a hundred times when news would come from abroad. There were duels and gambling debts and unsavoury associations. He has formed attachments to the lowest sort of people, permitted friendships with the scandalous and the insincere.” She leaned closer, pitching her voice low, even though we were quite alone. “It was even said that he was cast from the court at Fontainebleau by the emperor himself for attempting to seduce the Empress Eugenie. He indulges in wickedness the like of which you and I cannot imagine. He dabbles in the dark arts and illicit acts. He is insincere and untrustworthy, the weakest vessel in which to sail one’s hopes. He would dash them upon the rocks for his own amusement and call it fair. He is cruel and twisted and there is no good yet in him, save that he loves his mother and treats her with kindness. Be not mistaken, my dear, he is a monster. And would any woman not rejoice to be delivered from such hands?”
    I remained silent during this litany of his evils, thinking back to his peculiar treatment of me since my arrival, his familiarity, his forwardness. It was not the attitude of a gentleman to a guest in his home, and viewed in the light of Cosmina’s revelations, it sickened me that I had been so